Simply A Masterpiece

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The acting in this movie is really good.

An Audacious Amalgamation of Literature and Film, Goddard's Movie is bursting with Pop Cultural references. With a Philosophical Conceit, a Very Low-Budget, and Unlimited Energy from the Director, the Film was extremely Derivative and Influential. No Mean Feat.There are Incomprehensible Things, like one would likely Find in the Future, much of it doesn't make a whole lot of linear sense. The Hero (Detective, Secret Agent, Journalist), plucked Iconically From Film-Noir, says He drives a Ford Galaxy. It's actually a Mustang.This is a Tongue in Cheek Homage and its Strength is the Sharp, Flashing, Expressionistic Sets and Lighting. The Director's Expressionism comes from within the Camera and Not From SFX.There is much to Take In from "Alphaville". You can siphon Nuggets almost Everywhere and Constantly, and its Blend of Styling, both Literary and Cinematic, are that of Sci-Fi, Film-Noir, Comic Books, Orwell, Kafka, Welles, and others. It's Goddard's Bouillabaisse. A Tasty Treat of Film-As-Art. Stimulating, Bizarre, Unique, Avant-Garde, Funny, and Entertaining.

Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film ALPHAVILLE has one of the most bizarre premises in the history of cinema. Godard borrows the character of Lemmy Caution, a tough FBI agent/secret agent played by Eddie Constantine that had appeared in a number of French B movies, and then Godard drops Caution into a science-fiction film. And yet, this film taking place in a different galaxy far, far away doesn't use any specially created sets or fancy ray guns. Instead, Godard simply shot the film at examples of modernist architecture in Paris, in industrial buildings, and among the room-sized IBM mainframe computers of his time.In the dystopian city of Alphaville, all decisions are made by the gigantic Alpha 60 computer that pursues logic at all cost, banning human emotions and leaving the inhabitants zombified. Caution is sent from outside with the task of retrieving Alpha 60's creator, the rogue scientist Von Braun (Howard Vernon). Caution's femme fatale is Natasha Von Braun (Anna Karina), daughter of the scientist, whom she has never met. Though zombified like the other inhabitants of Alphaville, Natasha shows a budding individuality. Caution is baffled by the inexplicable behavior shown by the inhabitants of this city, but he remains focused on his goal to extracting Von Braun, no matter how many obstacles are thrown in his way.ALPHAVILLE is often categorized as a science-fiction film, but it's soon obvious that Godard was interested more in the changing world around him in the 1960s. He worried that the technocratic society, the desire to use technology to solve all manner of problems from food distribution to architecture, would rob the human race of a certain flexibility, of a certain liberty, and of a certain poetry. (It's interesting that Godard anticipated so much of the Sixties counterculture that would preoccupy the youth, though he was already well into his thirties, and themes that would later be explored by thinkers like Theodore Roszak.) Alpha 60 is less a vision of the far future, something from a time of intergalactic space travel, than a rising trend of the mid 20th-century.I had heard of the premise and much of the details before and I thought the film would be lame, but I absolutely loved it. I came to ALPHAVILLE after watching Godard's work to date, which features some remarkable imagery and avant-garde techniques, but is rarely very comedic. I had no idea that ALPHAVILLE would be so hilarious. As the film opens, we see Godard playing with the trope of the hardboiled detective or spy overcoming assassins sent to kill him, and this is exaggerated to the point it becomes slapstick. There are a lot of absurdist touches here, from a mass execution using bizarre methods (and where's the blood?) to the peculiar way our hero is at one point incapacitated by some goons sent to bring him to the feet of the villain.The performances here are great, too. In spite of the unusual script, which might have had some actors blowing off the director's concerns, Eddie Constantine unflappably maintains his noir style here. Akim Tamiroff turns in a great supporting role as Caution's fellow agent Dickson, and this already elderly actor brings in a lifetime of experience in comedic roles. Karina continues to show that, while Godard was originally interested in her merely as a pretty face, she had enormous talent. Some of the long shots are cleverly done, and the film includes an exciting car chase.

Even though Alphaville is about the midpoint in Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave, sixties filmography, it's really unsurprising to see him attempt to make a film that explores and subverts the general visual and narrative quips of your archetypal film noir story. The result is an interesting, if ultimately kind of droll, exploration from a filmmaking known for defying all convention and expectations like it's his job.The film stars Eddie Constantine in the daunting lead role of Lemmy Caution, a secret agent who is entering a town called Alphaville, posing as a journalist named "Ivan Johnson," claiming to work for the Figaro-Pravda. Caution is on a several top secret missions, one of which involves searching for a missing secret agent by the name of Henry Dickson (Akim Tamiroff), another is to exterminate the creator of Alphaville, who is Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon), and he has to destroy the computer that controls all of Alphaville, which is named the "Alpha 60." Alpha 60 was created by von Braun and controls all of Alphaville, making the city one of the most artificial cities in the world. Alpha 60 has completely dismantled the ideas of free thought, individualism, and self-satisfaction, making concepts like love, poetry, feeling, emotion, and mood nonexistent and stripping people down to the bare basic living, breathing, and speaking organisms.Alphaville adheres to the aesthetic and visual chemistry of American film noir quite nicely, making its presence known through dark and brooding chic and familiar camera angles. Having this cold and extremely unique style mesh together with Godard's often deviant and unconventional cinematic structure make for two very fitting styles that mesh well in the presence of one another. This shows that while Godard is keen on replicating the well-known characteristics and visualizations brought together by film noir - such as extreme darkness, cold and isolated cityscapes, rain on empty streets, and heavy use of shadows and the unseen elements - he isn't afraid to continue doing what he has been doing, which is plugging in his style even where one would assume it doesn't fit.As an exercise in style and the subversion of it, Godard's Alphaville can be granted a fairly high honor. However, despite a plot that really questions individualist freedom and the value placed on freewill, Godard does another alienating and disguising of that central idea in what seems to be a frustrating attempt to keep audiences within arm's length of the film at all times. There was never any specific connection between myself and the characters of the film, and because of that, I relied on style for the one-hundred minutes, finding nothing but guttural emptiness and a frustrating lack of interest in their motivations and interactions with one another. Even when the gorgeous, scene-stealer Anna Karina walks on screen, playing Natacha von Braun, the daughter of the professor and creator of Alpha 60, who is introduced to the complex emotions and feelings of love and happiness upon being introduced to Ivan Johnson, she doesn't make much of a splash like she did in Godard's earlier works like Breathless and Vivre Sa Vie.Film noir has always been a genre of film that has alienated me, whether it was the classic Maltese Falcon or Godard's early venture into the area, I've always been completed turned off by the characters, the structure, and their motivation, with the only thing I can really find myself immersing in and embracing is the style and the genre's unique and beautiful visuals. Even with traditional, American film noir, I found a certain, almost indescribable emptiness to it, but put Godard, his filming techniques, and his convention-defying aesthetic inside an already cold and unwelcoming environment and you have me even further lost.With all that being said, Alphaville is still lucky to have Constantine and Karina as its two core performers, both of whom usher in identifiable chemistry in the later scenes, and both work off one another in their ambiguous performances. Even Raoul Coutard's incredible cinematography compliments the film to a higher state than most films would get on cinematography alone, as he continues to emphasize his love for crisp, clean shots as well as holding nothing back in terms of visuals. Despite these golden attributes, Alphaville still gets brought down to a lesser level thanks to a story structure that finds ways to purposefully mystify, as well provide a viewer with frustrating attributes such as a grating narration in efforts to only make an already disconnecting story more disconnecting as it goes on. If there were ever a film to test your patience on how much you really like, appreciate, and understand it, here it is, in stone-cold celluloid.Starring: Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff, and Howard Vernon. Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.

The most underrated sci-fi movie ever! I love dystopia histories since I was a kid, then this movie - summed up with the french touch to cinema and the amazing weird camera's positioning from Nouvelle Vague (especially to a sci-fi movie) - has made it one of my favorite movies of all times.And I confess that I was stoked when I found that he used a Borges citation in some scenes. Besides other references to my favorite writer.If I can share a little spoiler there, what most amaze me about Alpha 60 is the dichotomy between doesn't understanding poetry and actually citing them. Such a Borgian plot.Definitely a must watch.